AFB and Queens

[Chef Isaac]

Say you have a colony that has AFB. The queen, you know still is good cause it layed a great pattern previous months prior. You want salvage the queen....

Can you pick the queen and introduce her to another hive?

[Riki]

Maybe it's possible, but why would you do that? Hygienic behaviour (IMO, the most important trait against diseases) is hereditary, is it worth keeping this genetics?
Regards,

Henrique

[Chef Isaac]

There could be more to it. Maybe it was contaminated frames and the queen didnt have a chance to fight it.

[Panhandle Bee man]

You can put the queen into a new hive, and shake the bees into the hive with her, then destroy the old frames etc..

But I am with Riki on this. I don't think that the queen has demonstrated enough good qualities to keep her.

"The queen, you know still is good cause it layed a great pattern previous months prior."

"Maybe it was contaminated frames and the queen didnt have a chance to fight it."

These 2 quotes contradict each other! You can't have it both ways Chef.

[Chef Isaac]

I do not see how they contradict eachother. She CAN have a good brood pattern in frames that have spores of AFB. When the spores become active (not sure I am using the right terminology), that is when the problem happens. Every coloney has spores of AFB in them.

[Riki]

As I said before, resistance to AFB is mostly due to hygienic behaviour. If the queen laid a good pattern AND that brood emerged (I'm making an assumption here, please correct me if I'm wrong) as adult bees, the disease wouldn't have shown up unless the hygienic behaviour (my opinion again) was lacking.

[Chef Isaac]

I do think it depends on what the spores were up to.

For example, I got a great queen from a producer that breeds for hygenic behavior. I placed it in a queenless nuc... all looked healthy at the time. Population dwindled and I come to the conclusion it was AFB.

If I gave the nuc frames that had a lot of spores present, maybe I was screwed to start with.

We will see if placing the queen in another nuc wil work. I am always up to learning :)...even if it is the hard way

[Ishi]

I posted a reply about a queen that was in a hive that got AFB, do a search for my post. She lives 3 years and had no AFB problems again.

[tecumseh]

ok chef first a question which is not totally relevant to the discussion at hand but none the less somewhat connected...

do you use any prctice for limiting afb?

now as far as we currently know there appears to be about seven genes that come into play in regards to a hive being resistent to afb. before genetic sequencing the behavior folks suspect that this resistance was connected to two genes (one for detecting and one for removing affected brood).. which should suggest that what science knows ain't poured in concrete or chistled in stone. since it is the workers that are preforming these house cleaning task, the bioliogy of the bees determines that if you did introduce a afb resistant queen into an afb spore infected hive that it would be 30 days before a work force would start to be assembled to begin to remedy the problem. so it would seem to me that there could be some logic in giving an affected hive a new start on new equipment and reducing the older contaminated equipment to eliminae the spore problem.

[Chef Isaac]

Good thoughts tec.

However, it takes more than one brood cycle to really kick in the hygenic behavior. Dont you think?

To be honest, I do not really do anything for limiting AFB until this year. My first year... a while back, I used Terra for the one hive I had. But that was a while ago.

This year, I have had some real problems with it..... 3 or 4 hives. I did buy some bees from another person so I am not sure if it was his or not.

I did use some terra this year and I just torched a set of equipment yesterday.

[kc in wv]

Chef Issac
I had AFB in the spring of 06 in 1 hive. Here is a link on how I handled it. This year that hive has drawn comb and filled it with 90 lbs of honey so far. I am watching it closely.

http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=212020&page=2
post # 15

To be honest I would give a lot of consideration before I saved a hive again. You really need to justify the cost and effort. Does the hive have some traits you really want to continue or is it because don't want to loose a hive?

Only you can decide what is right for your situation.
Good luck.

[Chef Isaac]

Kc:

I did think it over. I do not mind lossing the hive... it is the equipment but at the end, I am ok with loosing that too.

It was the queen that I did not want to loose... at least yet.

[notaclue]

We really don't have a choice here (legally) we have to burn it all in a hole. I would rather do that than chance spreading AFB to my other hives or anyone else's.

[Billy Y.]

AFB is activated when nurse bees feed spore-infected food to brood. The spores then activate while in the gut of the brood. AFB is a brood disease - adults are not affected by it, including the queen.

Breaking that brood-food cycle is the only way to CURE AFB. Terramycin only covers it for a while. Burning kills the patient so that's no cure either.

Shaking them on foundation works as it breaks that brood-food cycle. There are lots of ways to get AFB even with a hygenic queen so you can't always blame the queen. It does take a LOT of spore to infect a stong colony though - a suprising amount.

If you can wait and time it during a strong flow then the comb can be drawn with minimal cost as far as feed. A colony on new drawn comb is alway a good thing.

[naturebee]

AFB is activated when nurse bees feed spore-infected food to brood. The spores then activate while in the gut of the brood. AFB is a brood disease - adults are not affected by it, including the queen.

Good points Billy!

In 2005 I had quite a lengthy discussion with Dennis vanEngelsdorp, PA State Apiarist about AFB and breeding PA hardy resistant queens. He gave a convincing argument that resistant lines would not contract AFB because they would have eliminated spores by action of the Proventriculus, and lines with AFB should be eliminated as they are found regardless of queen performance or level of hygienic behavior. And this guideline I do follow!

Although Hygienic behavior is important in AFB resistance, Hygienic behavior alone was found NOT sufficient for AFB prevention, because it does NOT prevent larva from being infected. Action of the Proventriculus (honey stopper) plays a role in resistance to AFB, and resistant bee strains are known to filter the spores from honey suspension more efficiently than susceptible strains do thus preventing infection of larvae. Recommendations by researchers in a 2002 study and Dennis vanEngelsdorp are to eliminate bee strains with indications of poor tolerance against brood diseases - even if they have a good hygienic behaviour or good queen fundamentals. .

The 2002 study stated “These findings suggest that the hygienic behaviour expressed through removal of frozen capped brood alone or in combination with larval tolerance is not sufficient to model whether a honey bee strain will be able to overcome an AFB infection. E.g. the filtering mechanism of the honey stomach might be an equally important factor in explaining apparent tolerance against AFB.

Avoid using bee strains with indications of poor tolerance against brood diseases - even if they have a good hygienic behaviour. Continue the hygienic behaviour programs on promising bee strains. Another possibility might be to select bee strains based on natural selection in induced inoculation field experiments.”


Joe Waggle ~ Derry, PA ‘Bees Gone Wild Apiaries'
FeralBeeProject.com
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/HistoricalHoneybeeArticles/